Gay Rights

Category archives for Gay Rights

After all the hullaballoo over whether the legislature had to vote on the gay marriage ban proposal, they finally did so today and it passed. In this context “passed” only requires 25% of the votes, so that’s not a shock; the final vote was 132-64 against it, enough to put it on the ballot in…

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote that it could be worse? Turns out I wasn’t kidding. A conservative Christian news service is actually pointing to NIgeria as a model for American policy toward gays. The article is entitled Lessons for America from Nigeria – Archbishop Stands against Homosexuality, and it actually cites…

With New Jersey now allowing civil unions, the state’s attorney general is warning public officials that if they choose to perform marriage ceremonies, they must also perform civil unions for gay couples. In a legal opinion by N.J. Attorney General Stuart Rabner issued to municipal officials Rabner said that if they conduct ceremonies for opposite-sex…

Yet another appeals court, this time the 8th circuit, has upheld the Equal Access Act requirement that public high schools must allow the formation of Gay Straight Alliance clubs. This one involved the Osseo School District in Minnesota, which refused to recognize a student group called Straights and Gays for Equality (SAGE). The district court…

Andrew Sullivan has an excellent essay on how Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is exposing serious cracks in the conservative political coalition, primarily between those who truly are anti-gay and those who are publicly anti-gay purely for political purposes, but privately are fine with gays. A very insightful article, well worth reading.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that his own policy advocacy and campaign staff has helped make her life immensely more difficult, President Bush says he’s happy for Mary Cheney and her partner: “I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child,” Bush said in an interview with People magazine. “And I’m…

I wrote a while back about a lawsuit in Okeechobee County, Florida, where the school has refused to allow the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance club. Here’s an update. The school has filed a motion to dismiss the case Okeechobee County school officials have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an Okeechobee…

The Italian government is looking at passing a bill providing many of the protections of marriage to unmarried couples, gay or straight. The Vatican, needless to say, doesn’t like it one bit. And in their usual hyperbolic manner, they’ve declared in an editorial in the Vatican newspaper that the move would “eradicate the family.” That’s…

The state of Washington passed a law earlier this year that added sexual orientation to the state’s anti-discrimination laws and the religious right there is none too happy about it. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, is leading an attempt to get the matter put on the ballot to overturn that…

Paul Cameron, the favorite liar and discredited fraud of anti-gay bigots everywhere, has weighed in on Mary Cheney’s decision to have a child. Guess what? He doesn’t like it, not one bit. And true to his entire career, he cites entirely irrelevant data to support his bias: Dr. Paul Cameron, Chairman of the Family Research…